Interesting story about how the Fianna Fail government basically kept the US in Shannon. Why is everyone so surprised at this? US soldiers spend money in Shannon, and US planes need to be refueled, all creating jobs. Why are we surprised at this? If I were a TD for Limerick or Clare, I’d want to keep them too. Of course, the question no one seems to be asking was whether the Greens were told of the offer? If not, then FF were being dishonest with their coalition partners. But if the Greens did know…

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Interesting article in The Irish Times about EU integration, although I don’t agree with the European Parliament solution. If you let the EP choose a government for Europe, we’ll end up with a permanent and corrupt EPP/PES coalition that voters will never be able to actually vote out. No thanks.

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I’d say Gay Byrne’s entry into the presidential election would have caused all sorts of problems for RTE. This is Ireland, and it would have been almost impossible for RTE to find an interviewer that will not give Byrne a relatively easy interview, out of sheer personal loyalty to a friend. The problem would have been that every other candidate, including the candidates of the governing parties, would have been watching RTE like a hawk for favouritism, and RTE know it too.

By the way, is Sean Gallagher not beginning to look like the candidate of the last government here?

If Byrne had been elected, I reckon he’d actually have turned the presidency back into the old Paddy Hillary model, and we’d rarely have heard from him. Hands up who can remember what Paddy Hillary sounded like as president? We all remember him from his famous “You can have Boland…” speech, but as president he was decent but invisible.

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File this under the tab “Ah, here now!” You just have to love how crude the whole thing is.